Marvin Jones, 53, always wanted to be a firefighter. But when he wasn't offered a position with the Chicago Fire Department in 1995, he returned to a job with the U.S. Postal Service, a career that would last a total of 33 years.

On Thursday he earned a second chance to fulfill his dream. Jones was one of 86 firefighters who graduated from the training academy after a federal court ruled that the department illegally left out Jones and thousands of other African-American applicants.

"It's surreal," Jones said. "It's been a long time coming."

In 1995, about 26,000 applicants took a written test to become Chicago firefighters. With only a few hundred jobs available, city officials divided successful test-takers into qualified and highly qualified categories. But a class-action lawsuit filed by African-American firefighter applicantsargued that the city's cutoff score was arbitrarily set, leaving out thousands of qualified black applicants.

In 2011, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the city to train 111 applicants. About 5,870 others in the original applicant pool who passed the test were eligible for a share of a $51.5 million cash payout, according to the city's Law Department.

The applicants had to go through six months of emergency medical services and fire suppression training, according to the department.

"It's a huge day of pride," said Gregory Boggs, president of African American Firefighters & Paramedics League. "I'm very proud of them, all the hard work that they put in, their perseverance. They continued to fight. They never gave up."

For Jones, the extensive training and studying meant he had to miss family events, but the effort paid off, relatives said.